


ship to ship

by owlinaminor



Series: these are the voyages of the starship challenger [2]
Category: Haikyuu!!, Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Star Trek Fusion, Birthday, M/M, Orion Tendou, Vulcan Ushijima, feelings (many of them sad & lonely), pre-slash or something
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-20
Updated: 2017-05-20
Packaged: 2018-11-02 22:52:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,669
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10954383
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/owlinaminor/pseuds/owlinaminor
Summary: Today is Wakatoshi's birthday.  He has not told anyone.





	ship to ship

**Author's Note:**

  * For [miracleboysatori](https://archiveofourown.org/users/miracleboysatori/gifts).



> this fic is centered around birthdays - i wrote it for [kat](https://twitter.com/tendouaf)'s birthday (back in march), it takes place on ushijima's birthday, and i'm now posting it today in honor of tendou's birthday.
> 
> this is set within the timeline of later in [enterprising young men](http://archiveofourown.org/works/10369971); the boys we know as the third-years (in regular canon) are now seniors at the academy (in my au), and have an on-campus apartment together. (you can, however, read this short fic independently of that longer one.) and yes, i _am_ going to finish enterprising young men. it's way later than i expected, but it'll happen! i promise!
> 
> title is from the star trek: into darkness soundtrack. and thank you to [megan](https://twitter.com/ohirareon) for looking this over!

It is very difficult for Wakatoshi to get drunk.

Many of the Vulcan vital organs – the heart, the brain, the kidneys – operate much more quickly than those of other humanoid species.  Wakatoshi can process a bottle of beer almost before he finishes drinking it.  (Although, to be fair, Tendou once said that it takes him longer to finish a beer than it takes Goshiki to find a specific classroom in a building that he’s never visited before.)  He usually spends his friends’ social gatherings watching them grow progressively fuzzier while he stays lucid, and notes down their antics for the benefits of future scientific research.

It is difficult for Wakatoshi to get drunk, but it is not impossible.  If he is not careful – if he does not count precisely the number of drinks he is pouring into his digestive system – if he fails to match each with a glass of water – he is in danger of slipping into a dizzy alternate universe where logic and reason have lost their power.  He has only slipped into this universe twice: one night, just after finals, when his friends dared him to let himself go – and tonight.  Tonight, at a stained wooden bar, the murmur of late-night traffic rushing by outside.

Today is his birthday.  Or, well, perhaps yesterday was, at this point – Wakatoshi has lost track of how long he has been sitting here, arms on the bartop back against the high stool faint scent of whiskey in his nose.  On any other night, that thought – that he has lost track of time – would alarm him.  But tonight, time is a fuzzy fiction, a black and white construction like an old movie or a fairytale.

Today is Wakatoshi’s birthday.  He has not told anyone – not his friends at Starfleet, not his professors, not the barista who asked why he was ordering a bottle of their most expensive whiskey and setting out to drink it entirely by himself.  It is his birthday, but it cannot truly be his birthday, because his mother is not there to wake him with a smile and a glass of his favorite fruit juice, his father is not home early from the Institute to toss a ball back and forth with him in the yard before dinner.  There are no desert flowers on the table, no smell of hayashi rice wafting in from the kitchen, no watching the purple-gold sunset through his bedroom window.  

Wakatoshi tried to call his parents today, tried to at least pretend that it was a _birthday_ rather than a poorly lit projection, but they had an issue with their internet connection and couldn’t video conference.  Their signal has been down for a week, they said, but Wakatoshi didn’t know, because he hadn’t called in longer.

Sometimes, Wakatoshi can’t shake the feeling that he has failed.  He is not where he is supposed to be.  He couldn’t just go to the New Vulcan Science Academy like his father, move into state-sponsored research at the Institute like his father – he had to traverse across the galaxy in search of something _more._  He had to abandon his desert, his garden, his family, his very _name_ – and for what?  Classes that challenge him to his core?  Friends who can never fully understand him, no matter how many pages of his people’s literature they read?  A slim chance of discovery on a starship that could kill him before he can reach past the atmosphere?

Tonight, Wakatoshi can’t shake the feeling that he has failed, and so he gives way to this alternate reality, slips out of logic and into this strange sense of _loss_ – this strange sense that if he were to return to his garden, the flowers would have shriveled into dust – that the sunsets will dim to gray without him to see them – that he has forgotten how to correctly pronounce his family name.

Wakatoshi takes another drink.  The liquor slips down his throat like a knife, slicing his illusions and delusions one by one.  Perhaps this – this fuzziness, this emotion – is the true reality, and his precise logic the constructed fiction.  Perhaps he will pass the rest of his life on this barstool.  Perhaps he is only  a shadow, watching a world of color and dimension with no idea how to grow bright enough to fit.

“Hey.”

Wakatoshi lifts his head – it had slipped into his folded arms without a conscious decision in that direction – to find bright red and green, colors that would have stood in stark contrast to Wakatoshi’s desert.

“Satori,” Wakatoshi says.  His voice is hoarse – low – unfamiliar, as though he has not used it in years.  “What are you doing here?”

“Kawanishi told me he saw you here a few hours ago, and you haven’t been home yet, so I thought I’d come and see how you’re doing,” Satori explains.  His smile is wide and easy, as though this is a regular errand, but his hair is even more a mess than usual, his T-shirt is an old one he usually never wears outside the apartment.  He must have been worried.  And another knife slices through Wakatoshi at that thought – that he made his friend worried.

“So,” Satori prompts, smile growing tighter around the edges.  “How _are_ you doing?”

“Today was my birthday,” Wakatoshi replies, the words slipping out like the first raindrops of a storm.

Satori gasps.  “What?  And  you didn’t say anything?  You know we would have thrown you a party.”

Wakatoshi shakes his head – the movement is surprisingly painful.  “My parents would not have been there.  There would be no hayashi rice, no sunset, no…”

“Oh.”  The word is a long exhale, Satori’s sharp smile fading to something softer, something kinder – a side of Satori that Wakatoshi thinks fits perfectly in this alternate universe he’s inhabiting.

“You’re homesick.  Aren’t you?”

Wakatoshi has never heard that word before.   _Homesick._  Sick of home, sick for home, at home in a sickness.  Or some combination of the three – Standard words, unlike Vulcan ones, do not have precise definitions, can express and encompass and question all at once.

Wakatoshi does not answer Satori’s question in words, but he must answer it somehow – in the tilt of his head or the glint of his eyes – because Satori holds out his hand, says –

“Come on.  Let’s get you to bed.”

And so Wakatoshi takes Satori’s hand, and Satori leads him through the alternate universe – into a city that beats like a hundred drums just barely out of synch, across sidewalks that ebb and flow like waves on a tumultuous ocean, beneath streetlights that bend and flicker as Wakatoshi passes beneath them.

 _How do you stand so tall and steady when the streets are shaking?_   Wakatoshi asks the lights.   _How do you shine so bright when all the world is dark?  How do you not despair when all the people are tired?_

The streetlights do not answer – they only blink at Wakatoshi slowly, their colors flowing down into the pavement like river currents down a quiet waterfall.  They seem to say that their constancy is easy, is natural, is what they were built for.

Wakatoshi wants to reach out and touch their soft illuminance, wants to inquire further – but Satori pulls him on through the darkness, his hair brighter than any fluorescent bulb.

Satori pulls him on until, by some kind of miracle only possible in this universe without reason, they arrive at Wakatoshi’s bedroom.  Wakatoshi falls onto the bed like an astronaut letting go of gravity, lets Satori slip off his shoes and jacket, waits for Satori to get him a glass of water.  The water is cool and slippery down his throat – it does not quite quell the storm that has been swimming softly all evening, but it sooths the edges, turns the clouds from dark gray to clearer blue.

Wakatoshi lies backwards, looks up at the chasm of his ceiling.  He has never been afraid of the dark, only of the unfamiliar, and this ceiling is easy to confuse with the sky above his parent’s house on nights without a moon.  He can sleep beneath this ceiling, he thinks.  But some part of him – some part that only exists in this alternate universe, or perhaps feeds off of it – is tired of familiarity and darkness.  This part of him aches for streetlights and fire and swirling nebulae, aches for a bed that is smaller and a warmth that consumes.

Satori stands. His shadow reaches for the door.

“Goodnight,” he tells Wakatoshi, his voice quiet and strangely melodic, like drops of rain on a windowpane after a storm has broken.  “Call me if you need anything.”

His body follows his shadow.  One step – a second –

“Wait.”

The fabric of time seems to bend around Satori as he turns – his head, his shoulder, his chest – his face briefly illuminated by the headlights of a car rushing by outside the window.

“Yeah?”

Wakatoshi has slipped into an alternate universe, where logic is not king and an ache for contact is something he can lean into.  And yet, it still feels as though he is forcing his body through a wall of reinforced concrete when he says –

“Stay with me.”

It took force, took strength, for Wakatoshi to ask the question.  But it takes nothing at all for Satori to answer – to take one step, two, three and fall onto the bed – to curl his shadowy form into something warm and immovable – to lend Wakatoshi a bit of his brightness, just to hold onto, just for now.

The next morning, Wakatoshi will not remember the tickle of Satori’s hair against his chest, or the scent of Satori’s breath in his nose, or the echo of Satori’s heartbeat resounding through his chest.  But he will remember the feeling of slipping into an alternate universe – of giving himself to something outside of logic – of following a red lantern through a sea of darkness and finding his way home.

And the next year, Satori will remember Wakatoshi’s birthday.

**Author's Note:**

> bother me about eym on [twitter](https://twitter.com/owlinaminor) & [tumblr](http://owlinaminor.tumblr.com/)


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